Wangiss:Angela Lansbury's Merkin: But.. but.. butt.. London is heavily taxed, and filled with welfare queens and immigrant moochers. I was told that if the US were even to raise taxes on the rich a little, they'd all relocate to a more tax friendly country? Is the UK holding these people at Gunpoint?

When you're a billionaire, you don't have to have "income." Taxing income puts the pinch on doctors and lawyers. They actually live off of paychecks and buy houses and things. If they stop working, their accounts wane. But billionaires fly around in corporate assets, live in expensed hotel rooms much of the time, and take their five-week paid vacations at corporate-owned condos. One person can only eat so much caviar, and when he does it's usually a business expense. So the plastic surgeon making $400,000 pays the same amount of income tax as the billionaire who owns shares in a company that broke even this year because of capital investments that included, for example, a flat in London.

Is this coming through?

I remember reading that Bloomberg pays less than £2,000 a year in council taxes on his £70,000,000 London mansion.

mcreadyblue:Wangiss: Angela Lansbury's Merkin: But.. but.. butt.. London is heavily taxed, and filled with welfare queens and immigrant moochers. I was told that if the US were even to raise taxes on the rich a little, they'd all relocate to a more tax friendly country? Is the UK holding these people at Gunpoint?

When you're a billionaire, you don't have to have "income." Taxing income puts the pinch on doctors and lawyers. They actually live off of paychecks and buy houses and things. If they stop working, their accounts wane. But billionaires fly around in corporate assets, live in expensed hotel rooms much of the time, and take their five-week paid vacations at corporate-owned condos. One person can only eat so much caviar, and when he does it's usually a business expense. So the plastic surgeon making $400,000 pays the same amount of income tax as the billionaire who owns shares in a company that broke even this year because of capital investments that included, for example, a flat in London.

Is this coming through?

I remember reading that Bloomberg pays less than £2,000 a year in council taxes on his £70,000,000 London mansion.

That's because council tax (property tax) is set up in bands, rather than a percentage of value. He will have paid a lot of stamp duty though.

FiggyPudding:mcreadyblue: Wangiss: Angela Lansbury's Merkin: But.. but.. butt.. London is heavily taxed, and filled with welfare queens and immigrant moochers. I was told that if the US were even to raise taxes on the rich a little, they'd all relocate to a more tax friendly country? Is the UK holding these people at Gunpoint?

When you're a billionaire, you don't have to have "income." Taxing income puts the pinch on doctors and lawyers. They actually live off of paychecks and buy houses and things. If they stop working, their accounts wane. But billionaires fly around in corporate assets, live in expensed hotel rooms much of the time, and take their five-week paid vacations at corporate-owned condos. One person can only eat so much caviar, and when he does it's usually a business expense. So the plastic surgeon making $400,000 pays the same amount of income tax as the billionaire who owns shares in a company that broke even this year because of capital investments that included, for example, a flat in London.

Is this coming through?

I remember reading that Bloomberg pays less than £2,000 a year in council taxes on his £70,000,000 London mansion.

That's because council tax (property tax) is set up in bands, rather than a percentage of value. He will have paid a lot of stamp duty though.

Don't they just get around paying stamp duty like they do in California by having their LL C buy the shell corporation that owns the property?

I seem to remember a story about the most expensive UK property sold that no one could find out who was actually behind the shell corporations used to buy it.

mcreadyblue:Don't they just get around paying stamp duty like they do in California by having their LL C buy the shell corporation that owns the property?

There's an increased rate of stamp duty for houses sold through companies registered outside the UK, but that pales into insignificance when compared to the tax advantages of 'renting' your own house and potentially hiding the property from any high-value property taxation ('mansion tax')

FiggyPudding:Plus, while US citizens have to pay taxes on worldwide income and register all accounts greater than 10k with the IRS, the UK does not and you can be considered a non domicile resident for tax purposes.

The hereditary lord who owns the Daily Mail inherited it from his father, the 2nd Viscount Rothemere, free of death tax since (a) both were legally domiciled in France for tax reasons and (b) own the Daily Mail through shell companies in Caribbean tax havens. According to Private Eye when he needed some cash recently he "borrowed" it from one of these shell companies, and a loan is not taxable....

FarkinNortherner:mcreadyblue: Don't they just get around paying stamp duty like they do in California by having their LL C buy the shell corporation that owns the property?

There's an increased rate of stamp duty for houses sold through companies registered outside the UK, but that pales into insignificance when compared to the tax advantages of 'renting' your own house and potentially hiding the property from any high-value property taxation ('mansion tax')

The mansion tax is only a suggestion at the moment. Since this is the very area they are trying to address it would be easy to write any legislation to make the tax payable no matter who owns the house. Pay up or we take your house.

At the moment, as mentioned above, the highest possible annual property tax in the UK is about £2500, even if your house is worth £100 million.

FarkinNortherner:mcreadyblue: Don't they just get around paying stamp duty like they do in California by having their LL C buy the shell corporation that owns the property?

There's an increased rate of stamp duty for houses sold through companies registered outside the UK, but that pales into insignificance when compared to the tax advantages of 'renting' your own house and potentially hiding the property from any high-value property taxation ('mansion tax')

No, not sold thru a company, rather the company itself is sold.

This is used in California to allow keep Prop 13 valuations from being reset.

mcreadyblue:FarkinNortherner: mcreadyblue: Don't they just get around paying stamp duty like they do in California by having their LL C buy the shell corporation that owns the property?

There's an increased rate of stamp duty for houses sold through companies registered outside the UK, but that pales into insignificance when compared to the tax advantages of 'renting' your own house and potentially hiding the property from any high-value property taxation ('mansion tax')

No, not sold thru a company, rather the company itself is sold.

This is used in California to allow keep Prop 13 valuations from being reset.